Heidi Noble

Heidi Noble is a professionally trained chef and sommelier, food educator, and professional wine-maker. Most of all, she is a proponent of tasty, well-prepared, seasonal local food. She founded the Vancouver Convivium, is a member of Slow Food, and is a perennial donor to BC's Farm Folk, City Folk. 

Heidi established Joie Farm Cooking School with her husband Michael Dinn. The development of Joie grew out of a passion for the food and wines in the emerging region of British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. Heidi first visited the Okanagan with her husband Michael as a wine tourist, and returned two years later to purchase their 5-acre farm in Naramata, moving from Vancouver to the Okanagan in the spring of 2003. 

Heidi's formal chef training began at the prestigious Stratford Chef's School, after completing a BA in Philosophy and Critical Theory at the University of Western Ontario. Heidi attended Stratford in the mid-90s, just as the movement among chefs to use local food and work closely with local farmers was taking hold. It was here that she came to appreciate the vital link from field to table. 

This connection runs deep and influenced her decisions to complete apprenticeships with chef's in Toronto, working at the AGO's Agora Restaurant and Montreal's Toqué. After working in kitchens since she was 14, Heidi made a decision to shift from the kitchen into the wine trade, by enrolling in the International Sommelier Guild's program early in 2000.  In 2003, she and Michael left the Vancouver restaurant and wine trades for Naramata, BC, to develop Joie Wines and Farm Cooking School (link to http://joie.ca/). It has since become the leading culinary centre of the Okanagan Valley. 

"Joie" means "joy" in French: Heidi looks forward to sharing the joie de vivre that a new rural life of cooking, farming, teaching, and wine making has brought to her, both on her farm and through the pages her first book, Menus from an Orchard Table.